One wonders why Christians today get off so easily. Is it because unchristian Americans are that much better than unchristian Romans, or is our light so dim that the tormentor can't see it? What are the things we do that are worth persecuting?

Groping inside my duffel, I found my Swiss army knife and opened one of the blades. I stopped and turned brandishing it, an insane glint in my eye like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. My nearest persecutor, a young man covered in Mayan tattoos, was approaching fast. The knife made him hesitate—but that was all.

Sol Luckman

Source: Beginner's Luke: Book I of the Beginner's Luke Series, Pages: 55

Zacharia Johnson argued that the new Constitution could never result in religious persecution or other oppression because: The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.

Zacharia Johnson

Source: 1788, During Virginia’s ratification convention for the U.S. Constitution

How it is possible to imagine that a religion breathing the spirit of mercy and benevolence, teaching the forgiveness of injuries, the exercise of charity, and the return of good for evil, can be so perverted as to breathe the spirit of slaughter and persecution, of discord and vengeance, for differences of opinion, is a most unaccountable and extraordinary phenomenon. Still more extraordinary, that it should be the doctrine, not of base and wicked men merely seeking to cover up their own misdeeds, but of good men, seeking the way of salvation with uprightness of heart and purpose. It affords a melancholy proof of the infirmity of human judgment, and teaches a lesson of humility from which spiritual pride may learn meekness, and spiritual zeal a moderating wisdom.

Criticism::"It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.